Carrol Cox wrote:


> . . . The *Cantos* sort of teach
>themselves if one simply browses and rebrowses through them
>for a enough years without becoming impatient. Does it take as
>much time now as it did back in the '50s? (It took me five or
>six years.)

Jonathan Morse wrote:

The best single classroom experience I've had with the Cantos occurred
in
the 70s, when I was lucky enough to have a middle-aged Frenchwoman in
the
room. I guess she'd had at least a lycee education; at any rate she was
a
lot more sophisticated about language than the average American
undergraduate, and when we got to Pound's poilu slang in Canto 16 she
responded so passionately that I just sat back and let her do the
teaching.
This wasn't just a case of a Frenchwoman being happy to read French,
either; as we sat there and listened, we all learned that Pound was a
poet
who heard and recorded the language of the actual -- actual speech,
actual
history. As a fringe benefit, we also learned that Pound is right in
_ABC
of Reading_ about the necessity of getting some perspective on your own
language by learning another.

Could that have happened in the 50s, could it happen again in the 00s? I
hope so.

me:

My experience was in our informal poetry reading group. Our background
ranges from little literary education to refugees from academia.

Anyhow, I picked Canto 46 and 2. 46 went over very well. I made
some explanations, but on the whole the group didn't need much.

The Canto sounded like an uncle or a father or grandfather ranting.
Nobody had trouble with it.

2 was a flop. It baffled the group. The reason is, I was the only
one who had read Ovid (in undergrad work). Nobody else knew the myths.
This part of lit is dead outside of school.

I fear there is a vast literature now inaccessible, at least to
ordinary people.

--
John K. Taber